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Yunnan Oddities

云南 十八怪

Yunnan is famous for it's Eighteen Oddities (云南十八怪 Yúnnán Shíbā Guài) - peculiar or unusual cultural facts, customs or foodstuffs which set this south-western border province apart from the rest of China. The Oddities are very much a product of Yunnan’s varied physical geography (from Tibetan highland to tropical Xishuangbanna), climate, remoteness from the Chinese heartland, and the influence of the many minority ethnic groups who inhabit the region. They contribute to making Yunnan one of the most alluring travel destinations in China.

In the course of the research for this web page we discovered that no two sources agree on exactly which are the official 18 Oddities - it seems that there may actually be more than 30 peculiar things about Yunnan, depending on which promotional material you read! Is it all a marketing ploy? What an Odd Place we live in...

The following are the most popularly quoted, or the ones we like best. Some have been amalgamated. (All photographs ©LEAF):

Number 2 Straw hats are used as as pot lids
The abundance of bamboo and rice straw in Yunnan means a thriving cottage industry manufacturing eco-friendly baskets, shoes, chairs, fans, brooms … and pot lids, most often used on rice steamers (see below).

Number 4 Bamboo used for smoking pipes
A popular local way to inhale burning tobacco is through a water-filled metre long bamboo tube (yan tong). Why so popular? Because the water purifies the smoke and removes the cancer-inducing elements! Of course – how stupid of us! Golden thread tobacco is burnt in a cup-topped tube at the base of the pipe. The resonant gurgling noise which accompanies an inhalation is all part of the experience, for smoker and observer alike!

Number 5 Food called “Ear Piece”
”Ear Piece” is the literal translation of erkuai, a local culinary specialty made of processed, cooked, compressed rice. Erkuai can be boiled, stir-fried (see below, centre), or barbequed (kao erkuai, see below L, R) when it usually comes in the form of a circular disc smothered in a deep red mala paste of chilli, salt and Sichuan peppercorns. Another popular manifestation is ersi, finely shredded erkuai in a noodle soup.

Number 6 The same clothes are worn for all four seasons
Seasonal weather variations are not very marked throughout most of Yunnan (except perhaps the very north and northwest). In fact the province likes to boast of its “Eternal Spring”-like climate, so people tend not to bother dressing themselves with distinct seasonal clothing. Another Odditiy should be mentioned here: Girls wear flowers in all four seasons. Flowers bloom throughout the year, and the floral industry is one of the economic mainstays of the Kunming area. The same goes for fruit and vegetables, most of which can be grown year-round thanks to vast fields of poly-tunnels on the outskirts of the provincial capital.

Number 7 Rain here but sunshine there
Although seasonal climate variations are relatively small in Yunnan, the local weather conditions can be very changeable, especially during the summer rainy season, when thunderstorms can affect one side of a mountain and not the other. An old saying says: “Weather varies within a circumference of 10 li (5 km) and winter comes when it rains”.  Interestingly, one might think that this Oddity implies an abundance of rainbows, but this is not the case. There can be plenty of simultaneous rain and sunshine, but because of Yunnan’s low latitude the sun is usually high in the sky, arcing at high speed to or from the horizon. It’s never at a low enough angle for long enough to provide decent odds for rainbow viewing!

Number 8 Cars travel in the clouds
With its steep mountainous terrain, Yunnan is home to many steep winding roads which pass high over the mist-covered mountains, though many of these time-consuming routes are now being replaced by high-speed “expressways” with tunnels, sweeping viaducts and impressively high bridges. Another travel-related Oddity is Cars move faster than trains: the fact that car travel can be much faster than the limited opportunity for travelling by train in Yunnan. This is really a reference to the tortuous (and slow) narrow-guage line from Kunming to Hanoi in Vietnam, built by the French and completed in 1910. Another mention of this railway line is made by the Oddity Trains go abroad but not inland, reminding us of the fact that this line was, for 50 years, Yunnan's only rail link with the outside world. The "inland" line from Kunming to Chengdu was only finished in 1960.

Number 10 Young girls are called "Old Lady"
In some parts of Yunnan, adolescent, unmarried girls are playfully referred to as lao tai – “old lady”. The use of the term is not derogatory and in fact implies intimacy and goodwill towards the recipient.

Number 12 Girls carry tobacco bags
Women of the Lisu minority nationality are fond of smoking and chewing tobacco, and hang embroidered pouches from their waistbelts to hold the leaf. The bags have become part of their cultural identity and national costume, and are often exchanged as gifts.

Number 13 Everyone craves “Across-the-Bridge Noodles”
This is the most famous dish in Yunnanese cuisine and is extremely popular with locals, especially in Kunming where there are numerous dedicated restaurants. The dish is similar to a hotpot or Swiss bouillon fondue, except that the meat stock (of chicken, pork and duck) is kept boiling hot by a thin layer of oil on top of the soup. The ingredients are added by the diner: wafer thin slices of huotui ham and fish; raw quails eggs; yan cai pickled vegetable; lotus root; lettuce leaf; mushrooms (wood ear and cauliflower fungus); xiang su deep fried battered pork fat slices; doufu pi tofu skin; and of course mixian rice noodles.

According to legend, the dish was created by a resourceful wife in the SE Yunnan town of Mengzi whose daily task it was to provide her scholar husband with a hot lunch. The problem was that he worked on an island in the middle of a distant lake, accessed by a long wooden bridge, and she was constantly frustrated by his complaints about cold food. One day she accidently discovered the heat-retentive properties of soup topped by a layer of oil – and the rest is history!

Number 15 Rice is cooked in a bamboo tube
A very popular street-food in Xishuangbanna is the Dai speciality zhutong fan – slightly sweet sticky rice (with peanuts) steamed and barbequed in a small bamboo tube. The bamboo bark is cut away and the inner wood can be peeled back in strips to reveal the succulent and tasty rice inside, held together by the bamboo tube’s inner membrane. It’s also known as xiang zhu fan, after xiang zhu, the special thin, wide-jointed, variety of bamboo used. In the Dai language this is known as “rice cooking bamboo”. The secret of xiang zhu – the onion-skin of fragrant membrane lining the stem - is only revealed when finally eating the rice. After cooking, the tube is beaten to loosen the membrane, the bamboo bark is cut away and the inner wood can be peeled back in strips to reveal the succulent and tasty rice inside, held together by the bamboo tube’s inner skin. Xiang zhu bamboo matures over the winter months, so keep a look out for zhutong fan between the months of October and February.

Number 18 Small, lean horses are hard-working
Hardy mountain ponies have been used for centuries to transport goods through the mountainous Yunnan terrain. Most famously, bricks of Pu’er tea were carried in caravans on the Cha Ma Gu Dao (Ancient Tea Horse Trail) from the tea-producing areas of Simao and Xishuangbanna to the outside world: north-east to Beijing; north-west to Tibet; south to Laos and Thailand; southwest to Burma and India. These caravans of horses provided quite a stir in the southern countries, as the population there were more used to seeing oxen or elephants as beasts of burden. In fact this led to the Thais referring to the (mostly Muslim) Yunnanese as jiin haw, “Galloping Chinese”.       

The items on the list are not fixed, so other versions of the list may include other Oddities, as follows:

1. Stone grows in the clouds (Shilin Stone Forest)

2. Deep fried moss is a Dai nationality delicacy

3. Fried dry broad beans are count-sold (see photo below)

4. Fresh flowers are served as a vegetable

5. Water and fire are worshiped as gods

6. People sing rather than speak

7. Tea leaves are sold in piles

8. Non-slanting walls are built with cobblestones (see photos below)

9. Leftovers are made into a sour flavour dish

10. Shoes are attached with a cloth strap